More Articles

The Dispatch E-Edition

All current subscribers have full access to Digital D, which includes the E-Edition and
unlimited premium content on Dispatch.com, BuckeyeXtra.com, BlueJacketsXtra.com and
DispatchPolitics.com.
Subscribe
today!

While foreclosures dropped nationally in 2012, they rose in Ohio as banks tried to catch up with
delinquent properties after a lull in 2011.

Nationally, foreclosure filings declined by 3 percent from 2011 to 2012. In Ohio, they rose 13
percent, driven by a sharp rise in bank repossessions, according to a report released this morning
by the foreclosure-information company RealtyTrac.

Even with last year’s rise, foreclosures in Ohio remain well below their 2010 peak.

Ohio was one of 25 states in which foreclosure activity rose last year. Twenty of those states,
including Ohio, are “judicial-review” states, which require foreclosures to be approved by a court
before proceeding.

Foreclosures in judicial-review states slowed dramatically from late 2010 through much of 2011
as banks faced legal challenges to their foreclosure paperwork. After banks reached agreements with
states a year ago settling the so-called robo-signing cases, foreclosures picked up steam,
especially in judicial-review states.

RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist noted that foreclosures rose last year in 20 of the 26
states with judicial review. Among those 20 states, the biggest increases were reported in Florida,
with a 53 percent jump, and in three small states: Vermont, 134 percent; West Virginia, 56 percent;
and New Hampshire, 55 percent.Foreclosures fell in 19 of the 24 states without judicial review. The
biggest declines were in Nevada, with a 57 percent drop, and in Arkansas, Hawaii, Oregon and Utah,
all of which saw foreclosures drop about 40 percent during the year.

Experts say foreclosures are on the way down.

“We are comfortably past the peak of the foreclosure problem nationally,” Blomquist said.

Illustrating the point, RealtyTrac noted that foreclosures in December dropped to their lowest
level since April 2007. Ohio’s foreclosures last month were 3 percent lower than a year
earlier.